In this special feature, “CityNews” has been inundated with letters, all opposed to the government’s kangaroo cull of more than a thousand animals that began on June 12 across nature reserves in the ACT. The letters include a plea from Italy… 

I READ your article about the “cull” of 1042 kangaroos and joeys started this year in six of Canberra’s reserves.

I’m writing to you from Italy. I’m one of the many passionate Australian wildlife and kangaroo lovers worldwide.

I wish to express my love and admiration for Australia’s beautiful kangaroos and especially those in Canberra. It is the dream of all tourists from overseas to come and visit Canberra and see your iconic kangaroos happy and healthy in their beautiful land where they belong. When I dream of visiting Australia and Canberra, my first thoughts are the kangaroos! They are sentient, wonderful animals, they live with their mob and they have close family ties with each other.

I am very sad and scared knowing that every year since 2009,  the ACT government proceeds with the “culling” for the “management” of the numbers of kangaroos in Canberra’s nature reserves “necessary” to preserve the  “grassy layer” and the species that live there. The  “cull” started on June 12 and 1042 kangaroos and their joeys will be killed. It is an atrocity in 2023!

The kangaroos, your international icon loved around the world, paid the ultimate price of their lives for the ACT government failure.

There is no humanity, there is no conservation, there is no compassion and sustainability in the “culling operations”.

I would like to appeal on behalf of all international tourists to  Rebecca Vassarotti MLA and to all ACT ministers and the Canberra government: Don’t you understand that the annual killing of kangaroos in Canberra reserves is a shame for Canberra and for Australia in front of the world? I/we worldwide beg you to stop the slaughter immediately. International tourists like me are horrified and upset. Please save your beautiful Canberra’s kangaroos in the reserves. The world is watching with deep sadness and upset.

Paola Torti, Castelnuovo Scrivia, Italy

Stop the cull and properly count the kangaroos

WITH the commencement of the kangaroo cull on Red Hill, Save Canberra’s Kangaroo Group conducted a count across the whole reserve, through blackberry infested scrub, gullies and hills, finding only 380 kangaroos on the whole reserve. 

The ACT government asserts there are 1748 on that reserve, with 520 plus their “in-pouch” joeys to be killed over the coming weeks. 

Walkers were aghast to learn what the government was proposing, many saying: “But there are hardly any left after they culled last year”. They were even more aghast to hear the fate of the joeys, a fact of which they were totally unaware.

With such a serious discrepancy between the group’s count across the whole reserve, and the government’s office-modelled count, we call on Minister Vassarotti to stop the cull immediately and allow a full and independent inquiry into all the underlying premises and science the government claims support the cull.

When will the government listen to residents who do the hard yards on the ground to get the facts, not those who click their “I support the cull” on a sidebar in a paper.

Jennifer Macdougall, Farrer

Stop the cull for an independent inquiry

THE ACT government’s counting of kangaroos lacks credibility and the “program” requires transparency. 

My daughter has only just turned three and loves to go up the hill to see kangaroos, but after last year’s culI they are much more difficult to find.

It’s extremely concerning that the seriously flawed method of counting used and continuous fertility control will mean they no longer exist on the reserves in the ACT in a few years or less. 

This year on Red Hill they are about to kill 500 kangaroos plus the joeys that die as a result of having their little heads bashed with something plus the babies that die from the cold or stress escaping after their mum got shot. 

The method of counting used is WTL which is simply inaccurate. Flawed science and inaccurate counting methods are a serious concern to Canberra residents.

The rubbery numbers are more than enough reason to immediately stop the cull until an independent review of the kangaroo management program and its impacts on ACT’s native flora and fauna, including the accurate kangaroo population has been conducted.

Alex Kucharska, via email

Fire event preparations well underway

I SEE that preparations for the next big ACT fire event (like the one in 2002-3) are well underway. 

Older readers may remember that in 2002-3, four people were killed by the fires, more than 435 people were injured and there were 5000 evacuations. About 160,000 hectares were burnt which equated to almost 70 per cent of the ACT’s pasture, forests and nature parks including Namadgi National Park, Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and all government pine forest west of the Murrumbidgee River Stromlo pine plantation. 

There were about 488 houses destroyed and many more were damaged…. The Insurance Council of Australia estimated the 2003 damage at $350 million, with the 2011 estimated normalised cost of $660 million.

Oh yes. And the little skinks and other creepy-crawlies whose salvation the proponents of said Orwellian “conservation cull” claim it to be all about, went up in flames as well; as they did in the recent burn-offs of the understorey vegetation in parks and reserves that the Orwellian cull, for which the shooters will be paid around $400,000 by the ACT government to carry out, is purported to be about “conserving”.

The kangaroos would do that for free. They are our friends, not our enemies.

Ian MacDougall, Farrer

Culling via a computer program ‘appalling’

THE most egregious thing about the ACT government’s kangaroo killing program is its Nature Conservation (Eastern Grey Kangaroo) Conservation Culling Calculator, dubbed Robo-kill by people who care about biodiversity and the wellbeing of animals on ACT reserves.

Robo-kill is a desktop calculating program that, with enforcement legislatively required, determines how many kangaroos are to be slaughtered on ACT reserves every year. 

It does so on the basis of three assumptions, all of which are demonstrably wrong.

First, the calculator’s assumption regarding the numbers of kangaroos that it claims are ecologically desirable per hectare has been debunked by the CSIRO on the basis of the ACT government’s own data.

Secondly, the calculator’s kangaroo population estimates have been revealed, by numerous, systematic, scientific, independent, direct counts, to be vastly exaggerated.

Thirdly, the calculator’s assumption of the maximum kangaroo population growth rate is three times higher than the highest biologically possible population growth rate for Eastern Grey Kangaroos in the wild. Under natural conditions, kangaroo growth rates do not “grow” at all. They fluctuate in equilibrium with the condition of their environment.

The notion that the lives of thousands of sentient beings should be blasted and bludgeoned away on the say-so of a computer program is appalling. When the computer program is wrong on every count, it is unforgivable.

Frankie Seymour, Queanbeyan

Re-think this slaughter of innocent kangaroos

A GREAt joy in my life is to walk on Red Hill and see the unique and beautiful kangaroos. Many diplomats and overseas visitors over the years have said the same to me.

In 2023 the plan is to shoot a further 520 plus joeys after killing 717 kangaroos last year. 

Since urban development and roads surround the reserve, I fear that the kangaroo population will get so low that they may never recover. The grass is currently nearly a metre high so over-grazing is not an issue.

I am asking the ACT government to halt and re-think this slaughter of innocent Australian wildlife on Red Hill Nature Reserve now.

Peter Johnson, via email